VARIEGRAPHY BY STEVE VENRIGHT

I began making variegraphs, as I came to call them, in 1989 when I discovered the vivid chromatic qualities of a certain type of fingerpaint. Variegraphy’s primary technique — familiar to Surrealists, psychoanalysts, and kindergarten children the world over — is decalcomania. After the application of this technique — which primarily involves the smearing, squishing and pulling of paint — the results are selectively scanned and digitally modified or transformed.

As well as their electronic life here on your monitor, the variegraphs in this gallery exist as archival prints which can be purchased by the savvy art-buying public, by corporations hoping to improve the productivity of their labourers, and by intelligent impulse buyers such as yourself.